General Electric is in discussions with Baker Hughes on potential partnerships

• Alwyn Scott, Reuters

• 14h
• 1,655

General Electric Mike Blake/Reuters

General Electric said on Thursday it was in discussion with the No. 3 oilfield services provider Baker Hughes Inc on potential partnerships.

"While nothing is concluded, none of these options include an outright purchase," GE said in a statement.

Baker Hughes shares, which had jumped nearly 14 percent in extended trading after the Wall Street Journal had reported thatGeneral Electric was in talks to buy the company, pared some gains and were up about 7 percent.

GE shares were down 0.2 percent at $28.56.

The Journal had reported that GE has approached Baker Hughes about a takeover.

The deal would be large even for GE, roughly double the size of its $13 billion acquisition of power assets from Alstom last year.

Baker Hughes, which has a market capitalization of $23.1 billion, declined to comment.

GE has approached Baker Hughes to discuss the possibility of an acquisition, according to a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Baker Hughes Brendan McDermid/Reuters

It is not clear whether Baker Hughes will engage further in deal talks, the person said.

GE said last week that it believes the oil market has bottomed, but demand for the infrastructure equipment the company makes would take longer to recover, probably after the first half of next year.

Baker Hughes' planned merger with bigger rival Halliburton Co, valued at $34.6 billion when it was announced in November 2014, fell through in May due to opposition from regulators.

(Reporting by Arathy S Nair, Subrat Patnaik and Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru, Mike Stone in Washington and Alwyn Scott in New York; Editing by Andrew Hay and Cynthia Osterman)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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Google earnings top targets and the company will buy back $7 billion of stock

• Avery Hartmans
 

• 19h
• 21,807
 
• 4

Google CEO Sundar Pichai.Reuters/Beck Diefenbach

GOOG Alphabet-C

 811.57 3.92 (+0.50 %)

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GOOGL Alphabet-A

 834.21 5.10 (+0.60 %)

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Google's mobile and video ad businesses helped it topped Wall Street financial targets in the third quarter and the company authorized a new, $7 billion stock repurchase. 

Google’s stock barely budged in after hours trading, rising about 1% despite the strong results.

Here are the key numbers:

Net Revenue: $18.3 billion net revenue versus analyst expectations of $18 billion, up 21% year over year

EPS (adjusted): $9.06 versus analyst expectations of $8.64 per share

Other Bets revenue: $197 million, up from $141 million in the year-ago period.

Other Bets Operating Loss:$840 million, versus $980 million last year.

The so-called Other Bets, which include everything from smart home device company Nest to the high-speed Fiber service, have been under the spotlight in recent months amid a string of executive departures and limited revenue contribution. 

On Tuesday, Google Fiber, the high-speed internet access service, halted plans to expand to several cities and said it was laying off 9% of its staff.

Google CFO Ruth Porat told investors during a conference call that the company was not abandoning the high-speed internet business entirely, and referred to new wireless technologies as a more important focus going forward.

And she defeneded the Alphabet corporate structure that was created in the summer of 2015. 

"As we reach for moonshots that will have a big impact in the longer term it’s inevitable that there will be course corrections along the way and that some efforts will be more succesful than others," Porat said. 

In any case, the real engine of the Alphabet parent company is Google. And Google's online  ad business continued to thrive during the third quarter, thanks to the luctative video ads on the Google-owned YouTube site as well as the mobile ads Google displays on smartphones.  

Revenue on Google's own family of websites rose 24% in Q3. 

But Porat warned that the fees Google pays to mobile partners are higher than for its traditional online adveritsing business, cutting into profit margins. 

New gadgets

Google's expenses are also like to rise as it spends money to advertise the new crop of hardware devices, such as the recently released Pixel phone and the upcoming Home speaker.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai did not provide any details about sales of the Pixel, or revenue expectations for the hardware business, but noted that he was pleased with the consumer reception of the Pixel so far. 

The so-called "other revenue" category that includes Google's hardware sales, as well as revenue from the Googel Cloud business and from the Play store, increased 39% year-on-year to $2.4 billion in Q3.

Alphabet's stock reached an all-time high earlier this week after favorable reviews of its new Pixel phone. 

Buyback

With more than $80 billion in cash and sercurities now on its balance sheet, Google announced its second ever stock buyback on Thursday. 

The $7 billion buyback is larger than he $5 billion buyback the company announced last year, and Google said the stock purchases would take place on both the open market and through privately negotiated transactions. 

Google headcount increased by 3,378 in last three months to 69,953 employees.

Two of the more important numbers Google reports each quarter are cost per click — how much Google can charge for its ads  — and paid clicks, how many times people click those ads. In the third quarter, aggregate paid clicks were up 33% versus an expected 26% — a 9% change from a year ago — and cost per click was down 11% versus an expected 4.8%. The decline in CPC was consistent with Q3 2015. 

Visit Markets Insider for constantly updated market quotes for individual stocks, ETFs, indices, commodities and currencies traded around the world. Go Now!

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Here's a super-quick guide to what traders are talking about right now

• Akin Oyedele
 

• Oct. 26, 2016, 8:01 AM
• 897

Thomson Reuters

AAPL Apple

 114.48 -1.11 (-1.00 %)

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Dave Lutz, head of Exchange Traded Funds at JonesTrading, has a quick overview of what traders are watching on Wednesday.

In brief:

• Stock futures are lower. Apple is down 3% pre-market after the company reported another quarterly drop in iPhone sales and shrinking shipments across all the company's key product lines. 
• Crude oil is at a three-week low. The American Petroleum Institute's weekly report on US inventories showed a huge build on Tuesday. 
• The advance goods trade balance and wholesale inventories will cross at 8:30 a.m. ET. New home sales data will be released at 10 a.m. Microsoft is expected to unveil new Windows hardware at an event starting at 10 a.m. ET. Tesla will report earnings after the closing bell.

Here's Lutz:

Good Morning! US Futures under some pressure this AM with the Spoos off 40bp and QQQs 50bp as AAPL Earnings and falling Oil Weigh. Over in Europe, a sea of red with the DAX off 1% with Energy companies leading to downside, and all sectors in the red despite Luxury doing well on heels of Kering #s. London is off 1% as Lloyds weighs on the FTSE, while miners weak as Antofagasta gets whacked for 8%. Volumes are pacing pretty decent, with the Periphery trading heavy, and London seeing 25% heavier turnover than norm. Over in Asia, Hang Seng lost 1% - Shanghai lost 40bp – Aussie whacked for 1.5% as exporters and staples were hit, while Japan was the lone bright spot as “the BoJ appeared to be buying in the pm session” noted our desk in Kauai. 

We are seeing good selling of Sovs early, with Germany’s 10YY climbing 4bp, dragging US Yields back towards y’days peaks. The DXY is weaker – Euro higher despite Weaker Consumer confidence data from Germany, GBP struggling to hold 1.22 and the Yen catching a bid, offsetting losses by commodity currencies led by the Aussie $, which is getting whacked as weaker CPI posts down under. Turkish Scrap jumped 2% again and Ore in China added another 50bp – but all other base and precious metals are weaker. Crude is Hitting a 3-Week Low as API showed a huge build and rising production in Nigeria, while Natty gas continues to get pummeled into Expiry tomorrow. 

Ahead of us today, we get Advance Goods Trade Balance and Wholesale Inventories at 8:30 – 9:45 brings Markit US Services PMI, just before Bank of England Bond-Buying Operation Results at 9:50. 10am brings New Home Sales for September, then the Energy complex awaits DOE data at 10:30. Last night’s API showed a build of 4.75mm, well above the 1.75M build expected. Focus then turns to US Treasury Auctions, with a $5B 2Y floater at 11:30, followed by a $34 Bln 5-Year Note auction at 1. Yesterday’s 2Y auction was weaker than anticipated, with Dealers holding over 50% of the bag. Earnings continue to roll, with focus on names like ABX, TSLA, TXN, WDC tonight.

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Inside the Google Brother's Master Mission

2014 

When you've got Bill Gates worried, you know you're doing something right. Sergey Brin and Larry Page first met on the campus of Stanford University in 1995. What transpired as a result of this meeting forever changed the way we search the internet. Nearly 20 years later, the search engine with a funny sounding name is one of the world's largest and most powerful companies.

The Birth of Google. Sergey Brin was born in Russia, to mathematician parents, and moved to the U.S. at a young age. Larry Page grew up in Michigan. Both of his parents were computer scientists, and at a time when few people were. Their bond was their irreverence for convention, their creativity and a belief that the two could change the world. And while they may have come up short on that front, the two forward thinkers did change the entire complexity of the World Wide Web.

Few people probably remember, but in the late 1990s internet searches took forever to conduct and produced results that were often irrelevant. The two computer science geeks had an idea that would change that. Using backlinks as a way to gauge value, they created an algorithm that would only display search results of the highest quality.

The Adolescent Years. On September 15th, 1997 Brin and Page registered Google as a website. Shortly after, while sitting on a friend's porch at Stanford, they received a fortuitous visit that would launch their company. Sun Microsystems' co-founder, Andy Bechtolsheim, pulled up in his sports car and wrote the two a check for $100,000. A check they couldn't even cash yet, as they hadn't properly set up Google as a business.

At the time, there were already five search engines, and many believed that a sixth would be useless. However, it didn't take long to convince venture capitalists of their vision, and they eventually received the start-up capital they so desperately needed.

Google: All Grown Up. On August 19th, 2004, Google went public and opened at just over $100 per share, earning the company 23 billion dollars. Brin and Page have been aggressive in acquiring assets that fit their vision, such as YouTube and Android. They've also been active in development, adding Google Maps, Google News, Google Earth, and in response to Facebook's incredible success - Google+.

In 2012 alone, Google earned over 50 billion dollars in revenue. They've made our lives easier by organizing the world's information. They've changed the way we get that information. And even changed the way we talk, as the proper noun is now regularly used as a verb.

The biggest IPO of the year is off to a disappointing start

• Reuters and Akin Oyedele

• 48m
• 2,279

Employees work at a sorting centre of Zhongtong (ZTO) Express ahead of the Singles Day shopping festival, Chaoyang District, Beijing.Jason Lee/Reuters

Shares of Chinese package delivery company ZTO Express opened at $18.40 per American Depository Share, below the initial public offering price of $19.50. 

The company raised $1.4 billion in the biggest US IPO of the year on Wednesday as early backers cashed in on China's booming online-shopping industry.

On Thursday, the shares were indicated to open at $20-$22 a share. ZTO priced 72.1 million shares at $19.50 a share, above its previously indicated range of $16.50 to $18.50 a share.

The stock market debut, the biggest by a Chinese company since the $25 billion IPO of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2014, gave the Shanghai-based company a market value of more than $12 billion.

The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trades with the ticker symbol ZTO.

(Reuters reporting by Lauren Hirsch; Editing by Bill Rigby)

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Tesla shares spike after it beats on revenue and maintains its outlook for car deliveries

• Matthew DeBord and Akin Oyedele

• 17h
• 11,234
 
• 11

Tesla shares after-hours.Markets Insider

SCTY SolarCity

 19.99 0.27 (+1.40 %)

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TSLA Tesla Motors

 212.00 2.38 (+1.10 %)

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Tesla shares rose Wednesday after the electric-car and battery maker reported better than expected sales and said it is on track to meet its delivery targets for the year.

Revenue in the third-quarter was $2.3 billion, well above the $1.9 billion analysts expected.

The company reporteda profit of $111 million, or $0.71 on an adjusted per share basis. That's its first quarterly profit since early 2013.

Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected a loss of $0.54, though that estimate may not be comparable, because the company has changed the way it accounts for some adjustments to its earnings.

Tesla said it expects to remain profitable in the final quarter of the year.

The shares rose as much as 7% after the results, which cap off a period during which the company struck a multi-billion takeover and reported a substantial ramp-up in deliveries. Investors are focusing on Tesla's cash-burn and potential need for additional funds, as it expands production and absorbs solar-power company SolarCity, which it agreed to buy in August.

Tesla said it delivered 24,821, vehicles in the third quarter (300 more than it initially reported), and maintained its second-half estimate of 50,000 deliveries, at the low end of its full-year guidance of 80-90,000. 

The company is spending to ramp up Model X SUV production and bring its Nevada battery factory online. The company's third-quarter capital expenditure was $247.6 million, well short of analysts' estimate of $763 million. The company ended the quarter with $3.1 billion in cash and lowered its outlook for capital expenditures for the year to $1.8 billion from the $2.25 billion it had targeted earlier.

During the third quarter, Tesla said it would acquire struggling solar-panel installer SolarCity for $2.6 billion in stock. It will also assume Solar City's net debt of about $2.8 billion, bringing the total deal value to nearly $5.4 billion. Investors will vote on that deal in mid-November.

SolarCity also rose after Tesla's report.Markets Insider

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